Archive for the ‘Tour of Missouri’ Category

Mark Cavendish, Boy Racer, has a respiratory issue, according to Columbia-HTC team doctors.

He withdrew from the Tour of Missouri on Thursday after the medical staff recommended some serious recovery time. However, Twisted Spoke is not positive it’s a lung problem. Could be the stomach. We’re speculating it was that massive 23 oz sirloin steak he had for dinner last night at the Sirloin Stockade in Rolla. The Pepto helped but this morning he couldn’t Rolla to the start line. But that’s just our theory.

Special thanks to writer/photographer James Raia who snapped the restaurant in question. He’s covering the Tour of Missouri for the SF Examiner. You’ll find his posts at this click.

Surely this was a misprint. Some April Fools joke told way too early. Some kind of internet hoax, like a Tahitian island for sale for $64 or a dinner date with Tile Tequila, the new cycling sex pot. Apparently and inconceivably Thor Hushovd of Cervolo beat Mark Cavendish in stage 3. Missouri fans were treated to a shocker, like seeing Haley’s Comet twice in one night. Or Paris Hilton reading a book by Marcel Proust.

But no, a further google of the major cycling web sites confirmed the astonishing news. Cavendish was beaten in a sprint by a sprinter from another team. A human being, a person in lycra, on a bicycle. And yes, it was the aforementioned Thor, God of Thunder, swatting Boy Racer aside. Read that a few time until it sinks deep in your brain, past the incredulity of the statement, the absolute bizarre, Twilight Zone freakishness.

Yeah, we were baffled. How was this possible? Was the entire Columbia team except Cavendish a no-show in Rolla, victim of swine flu or Legionaries disease? But it happened and here is how: Bold thinking, friend, new tactics, fresh intel. Teams have been trying to figure out how to mess with the Columbia train all season, Giro and Tour de France. Nothing worked. Garmin never figured it out but Cervelo did.

Chief bad-ass Thor Hushovd summed up the modus operandi: “If we did a proper lead-out than maybe Cavendish will get on my wheel and then it’s easy for him. We just wanted to make it hard: we attacked, we went really fast in the end and I think that’s how we messed up the whole lead-out into the sprint.”

Boy Scouts have a plan, Green Berets have a plan and Cervelo had a plan. This is Mess Up The Other Guys Train 101. Hard to do but the only strategy when a well-drilled unit is killing you stage after stage. Our hats off to the entire Cervelo team for not just talking the talk. It ain’t easy because Cavendish is without question the fastest man in the world.

Beer, bike racing and Trappist monks. Nothing weird about that. With Omloop Het Niuewsblad and Sunday’s Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne just days away, we raise a glass of Trappist beer in toast and hail the stellar efforts of Dutch brewing. After all, you gotta wash those frites down with something. Budweiser would just be bad form, like showing up […]

(Note: This is our third installment of Dutch Treats in celebration of the fast approaching race season in Belgium.) The responsibility for the current Dutch Bike craze falls squarely on the Dutch. The wonderful irony is, the entire cycling universe is in ecstasy but not the Dutch. Not their style to get worked up about […]

Gumby is back. Yes, he breaks but he always comes back strong. Veteran American rider Chris Horner showed everybody in the Tour of Sardinia he’s feeling few effects from his five major crashes last year. The bald headed rider from Bend, Oregon put on an impressive display in the queen stage, finishing 2nd to Roman Kreuziger […]

In our second installment of Dutch treats to celebrate the fast approaching Belgian racing season, we tackle the tantalizing subject of Belgian frites, the beloved Dutch snack. Bike racing and Belgian frites are so deeply intertwined in the culture that it’s fair to ask if one could survive without the other. There is no tour […]